Clown

My first reading of The Clown has just taken place and my opinion is that it is a understated and wonderfully orchestrated piece of musical composition. The cohesion works just fine with the addition of the composition's (Passions Of A Woman Loved) and (Tonight At Noon). This could serve nicly as a score for a film. The typical hard charging grind of the ryhthm section featuring Mr. Mingus on bass and the ever solid drumming of Dannie Richmond is right on time as always. Hadi and Knepper's horn contributions are stuff of genius as well. The interplay between the musicians is fantastic. The narration on (The Clown) by Jean Shepherd weaves itself very nicly within the framework of the composition and appears to be just what Dr. Mingus ordered. Being a jazz drummer and composer myself I can fully appreciate the consentration, dedication, energy and compositional talent that is displayed in this set. I am a die hard Mingus fan and this just adds to his huge catalog of musical treasures for the world to enjoy and appreciate. I enjoy the complete Mingus catalog and this one is a somewhat overlooked gem to be sure. Mingus the poet scores a knock out here folks. Do yourself a huge favor and pick this one up. If you love straight up brilliant jazz and classic composition's of not only jazz but any genre, then you will love this masterpiece. It's a keeper and a true treasure.

Classic straight ahead jazz with some period surprises.

Great album.

great cd

AI recommend this album to anyone getting into Charles Mingus. Aside from the Black Saint and the Sinner lady, this is my favorite Mingus album.

As expected.

I received the cd jewel case; however it did not contain the Mingus disc, rather a John Coltrane! Needless to say I was not satisfied

Depending on which version of this CD you actually get, it comes in two distinct re-releases, both essentially the same remaster with exception to the cover. Rhino Presents Atlantic Jazz Gallery watermark clearly visible on the left side cover and same Artist Title configuration. If you purchase/receive the “Jazz Heritage Society” version with their logo in top right corner, the art will be the original cover art of the mouth-chin area of Charles Mingus (a great shadow and light photograph), or if it is the “regular” version, it will be the one pictured with the reissue “Clown” cover. Just make sure you are getting either of these products, as the Warner Brothers Special Market Products or BMG issues (and others) are not the beautiful work that was done by Bob Carlton and Patrick Milligan and you will certainly not get the terrific accompanying booklet either. Look for Rhino catalogue number R2 75590 or Jazz Heritage Society catalogue number 5183420. All others are inferior. This 1999 remaster using the authentic original 1957 Atlantic Recording Studio Master Tapes is simply astounding. The “High Fidelity” sound (1960’s shorthand for Mono but with “space” so it “feels” like stereo) is actually awesome and on a good stereo system, with or without faux surround upgrades (like 3D Phonic) it just sounds like you are right in the middle, with Mingus, Shafti, Knepper, Legge, and Thumpin’ Danny Richmond all around you. When Charles starts crawling around the fretless wonderland you will feel it in your gut as well as your sonic mind-centre.This is a fundamentally important jazz album, both to jazz aficionados and to Mingus himself. The reissue comes with two “bonus” tracks which were recorded for the record but were left off by Mingus in favor of the four tracks selected “because some of those guys had been saying that I didn't swing. So I made some that did. This album also has the first blues I've made on record." (from the CD reissue liner notes). Passions Of A Woman Loved and Tonight At Noon are reunited with their session-mates on this CD and now you get the whole recording session as it was intended but was too long for LP records at the time (the two songs ended up on TONIGHT AT NOON released in 1962).The title track itself is something quite different entirely. Jean Shepherd (who many of you will recognize as the writer and narrator of The Christmas Story, author of In God We Trust All Others Pay Cash, and Wanda Hickey's Night of Golden Memories And Other Disasters) is an improvisational narrator of a, let’s call it a Bohemian story about a Clown, with a punch line I don’t want to give away. The story and the music in The Clown are about as Avant Garde as you could get in 1957, and actually one can truly say that this piece has aged very well, and can be enjoyed immensely by any modern listener.What you get here, before you even get to The Clown, is a) an intensely personal and riveting Mingus in Haitian Fight Song, b) a blues based track which Mingus has injected with Count Basie and church in Blue Cee, and c) a composition, Reincarnation Of A Lovebird, which is dedicated to Charlie Bird Parker.I don’t know if it is Karma or what, but the way the last two “bonus” tracks end the CD, it feels really organic from start to finish as if they were intended to be in this order from the get-go, so that the listener doesn’t even get the feeling these “leftovers” were left off to begin with. There is nothing sub-par about the bonus tracks, they were recorded to go on this record but ended up not being so, but now, as returned merchandise, fit astoundingly well on the shelf alongside the original release. The result is a real woo-hoo that leaves jazz lovers clamoring for more and neophytes craving more exploration. Genuinely, even though I was into fusion and some bop in the early 70’s, I actually “discovered” Mingus myself through Joni Mitchell and thankfully it lead me back to this album ultimately.THE CLOWN is one of those monumental jazz recordings that denotes an epochal change or shift in music evolution. Just as BRUBECK TIME (released in ’91 as INTERCHANGES ’54 with four additional tracks on CD and still widely available on Columbia Jazz Masterpieces) was a momentous shift in 1954 away from “big” bands to small quartets performing what a lot of “purists” now consider “pure jazz” (I will argue until my teeth turn blue that all jazz is technically “fusion” by literal definition; just check out the titles of the tracks on BRUBECK TIME and you will note that the jazz group took “pop” songs, standards of the day, and then fused them into improvisational masterpieces; this then is “fusion”; ‘nuff said ‘bout that). What Charles Mingus does generally, and more specifically in THE CLOWN as a monumental work of art, is to take the range of human emotions and translate them into musical progressions. Mingus talked about this extensively in the original 1957 album liner notes and what you get with this album and later works of Mingus is a celebration of expression all woven into the fabric of readily identifiable spirit and emotion. For instance Reincarnation Of A Lovebird begins with a fugue state where all instruments are or seem to be in the death throws finale of life, only to be reborn out of the confusion into the beauty of Bird’s musical spirituality. Any progressive rock / fusion fans who are familiar with the works of Yes would be able to compare this piece to Close To The Edge by Yes. Both pieces work to bring an emotional state of fugue and confusion conducted by music into the spirit of the listener. This is what Charles Mingus does best and what I feel he was the pioneer of – an existential stream of consciousness musical ability to translate Being into Music, and thus he created fusion of improvisational jazz and the human condition. Any jazz player can “improvise” notes almost mindlessly to get a good tune, but to really make a “statement”, to make music into “poetry”, without words, to give music lyrical quality and complexity, that my friends is an art form only a tiny few can master. Charles Mingus was the American master of this art and all others followed on his path.